Canon PowerShot S95 is a high-end compact point-and-shoot digital camera. It has a larger-than-normal image sensor and modest pixel count that translate into better low light image quality. Unfortunately it does not have a built-in intervalometer so no direct support for time lapse photography (it does support a limited time lapse in miniature video mode). That doesn’t mean it is not possible though. There are two ways to make time lapse photography with Canon PowerShot S95 possible.

The rubber band and eraser trick

This one is quite simple, just set the Canon PowerShot S95 to continuous shooting mode and hold the shutter button down, not by hand but using a rubber band and an eraser. You can check out the following video to find out how it is done.

There isn’t a way to adjust the delay between the shots so you get what the camera can do based on the camera setting.

The CHDK way

CHDK stands for Canon Hacking Development Kit. Don’t be scared by the name. It is actually fairly easy to hack your Canon PowerShot S95 to make time lapse photography possible (together with other things Canon purposely disabled so you have to buy more expensive cameras). The hack is non-permanent and non-destructive so you don’t have to worry about warranty issues.

If you want to get started, you can start from the CHDK Wiki, or follow this One Page, Ultra-Quick Users Guide. For the Canon PowerShot S95, read the S95 page. If you don’t have time to read through all the stuff, you can follow the following video tutorial. It is not for the same camera but you should be able to get the general idea.

The video is fairly clear except that you will have to pick the correct file to download based on your camera’s firmware version. To make time lapse script work you need to have a script and script folder on the SD card to put it in. You won’t get that if you follow the video that says copy two files… To make it easy just copy the entire content of the zip archive you download to your SD card. The script can be downloaded here (the one at the bottom of the page is the newest).

Finally the following is a good example of Canon PowerShot S95 time lapse with CHDK.

I did try this myself but all I got so-far is a boring lava lamp time lapse, which you can find plenty on YouTube. I will post something interesting when I have it.